The decision by the United Sections of the Court of Cassation on Italian citizenship partly frustrated those who had hoped for a stronger response against the retroactive effects of the Tajani Law. The sentence was published this Wednesday (29).
There was an expectation that the highest instance of ordinary Italian jurisdiction could go beyond the so-called "minor issue...and to address a question that has gained enormous importance since the 2025 reform: Could a new law determine that someone who was born an Italian citizen decades earlier never acquired that citizenship?
The Cassation Office preferred not to go that far.
The choice, however, needs to be understood within the context of the process before the judges. The litigation began long before the reform. The first-instance judgment is from 2019, the appeal decision is from 2024, and the appeal reached the Court of Cassation also in 2024. Therefore, when the case originated, the Tajani Decree simply did not exist.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed: citizenship is born with the person.
- New legal front opened
- Processes can still be filed.
- Individual assessment before any decision.
That is precisely why the United Sections chose the most conservative solution: they expressly applied the transitional rule and stated that Article 3bis does not apply to lawsuits filed before March 27, 2025.
For those who hoped to find a definitive answer against the Tajani Law in this decision, one step was missing.
There were three possible paths.
Before the decision was published, it was possible to imagine three levels of response from the Cassation Committee.
In the scenario most favorable to descendants, the Court could directly address the temporal issue and affirm that citizenship is acquired at birth and that a subsequent law cannot simply retroactively erase a status already acquired.
In the intermediate scenario, the United Sections could reaffirm principles such as original acquisition, permanence, and imprescriptibility of citizenship, without directly declaring that Article 3-bis is inapplicable to those born before 2025.
This would be important legal material for new actions and, above all, for the discussion that is now before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Finally, there was the most restricted path: to acknowledge that those processes were already protected by the transitional rule and not to answer a question that did not need to be decided in order to resolve the appeals.
It was essentially this third path that the Cassation Office chose.
It is a procedurally conservative stance, consistent with a court of legitimacy: resolving what is necessary to decide the specific case, avoiding pronouncements on issues that do not determine its outcome.
But the rationale went far beyond three lines.
Frustration, therefore, is relative.
The Cassation Committee could have ended the discussion simply by stating that the Tajani Law did not apply to proceedings prior to March 27, 2025. It did not do so.
The Sezioni Unite extensively reconstructed the legal nature of citizenship iure sanguinis and reaffirmed an extremely important formulation:
"Citizenship by birth is acquired originally iure sanguinis, and the status of citizen, once acquired, is permanent, imprescriptible, and can be judicially protected at any time."
It is precisely this passage that keeps the most interesting part of the discussion open. Because the Tajani Law is based on a different construction.
The problem that persists
The Constitutional Court's decision changed the landscape. The new citizenship law will now be reviewed by the European Union's courts of justice.
Article 3-bis stipulates that certain persons born abroad and holding another citizenship shall be considered as such. had never acquired Italian citizenship, even when they were born long before the Reformation.
In Ruling 63/2026, the Constitutional Court expressly recognized that the rule produces retroactive effects. former tuncHowever, it was understood that this constitutes a "preclusione originaria all'acquisto," an original preclusion to acquisition, and not the withdrawal of an already existing citizenship.
The difference seems technical, but it's at the heart of the controversy.
According to the interpretation accepted by the Constitution, a descendant not recognized until the legislative change can be treated under the new law as someone who never acquired citizenship.
The Cassation Office, in turn, has just reaffirmed that, provided the legal requirements are met, Citizenship is acquired originally at birth.That's where the two structures start to rub against each other.
Mellone: rights are conferred at birth
In a statement released this Wednesday (29), lawyer Marco Mellone, who worked on the case, highlighted exactly this aspect of the decision.
According to him, the Cassation process re-established that "The right to Italian citizenship by descent is conferred on individuals at the moment of birth and is not subject to any time limit.".
Mellone also highlighted that the United Sections have changed the prevailing orientation on the so-called "child issue," rejecting the interpretation that allowed the child's citizenship to be considered lost due to the subsequent naturalization of the parent.
But, for the current debate on reform, perhaps the most relevant passage is precisely the one that does not directly mention the Tajani Law: the reaffirmation of the original acquisition of status.
The good side is in Luxembourg.
Days before the publication of the Court of Cassation's decision, the Italian Constitutional Court made a decision that completely changed the landscape.
In Ordinance 147/2026, the discussion on the compatibility of the new citizenship regulations with European law was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
And the question posed to Luxembourg hits precisely the sensitive point: the possibility of imposing an original preclusion of acquisition on persons who They were already born before the reform came into effect..
It is in this process that the foundation of the United Sections can gain importance.
The Cassation Court did not declare that the Tajani Law retroactively revokes an existing citizenship. But it provided a powerful premise for those who argue exactly that: Status is inherent to a person, not acquired through subsequent administrative or judicial recognition.
The Constitutional Court itself, in Judgment 63/2026, admitted part of this premise when it wrote that "status is acquired at the moment of birth of an Italian citizen," although it added that, for descendants born abroad, this status needs recognition to concretely produce the legal regime of citizenship.
This tension can now be examined at the European level.
"It's removing the status."
According to a lawyer interviewed by Italianismo, this is precisely where the decision could have its greatest future impact.
"She acknowledges that the status exists at birth and confirms the declaratory nature of the settlement. When the law speaks of the original preclusion of acquisition, the problem is knowing whether, in reality, it is not removing a status that already existed," she states.
According to him, the passage could be used in the discussion before the Court of Justice because it comes from the United Sections, the body responsible for standardizing the interpretation of legislation by the ordinary Italian jurisdiction.
The ruling does not mean that Luxembourg is obliged to follow the interpretation of the Court of Cassation. It does, however, mean that the European debate now takes place in the face of a peculiarity that is difficult to ignore: Italian jurisprudence itself continues to classify citizenship iure sanguinis as originally acquired at birth.
Could the annulment have gone further?
It could have been done, but there was a strong procedural reason not to. The Tajani Law was not necessary to decide those cases.
Sentence 24045 itself establishes as its first principle of law that the new rules do not apply to lawsuits filed before March 27, 2025.
To delve deeply into the constitutionality, retroactivity, or European compatibility of the reform would mean encroaching upon a norm that did not determine the outcome of the case.
Therefore, to say that the Cassation "validated" the Tajani Law would be wrong. Similarly, to say that it "overturned" it would also be wrong.
She simply didn't need to judge her.
Less than the optimists expected, more than it seems.
The initial reaction may be one of frustration.
Anyone expecting a statement from the United Sections saying that a 2025 law cannot erase the citizenship acquired by a person born decades earlier was wrong.
But it would also be premature to conclude that the decision is not useful for those who intend to discuss the reform now.
The annulment reaffirmed precisely the premises upon which this challenge can be built: Acquisition at birth, original nature of the right, permanence of status, and imprescriptibility.
The next step was missing: explaining what happens when a subsequent law attempts to retroactively redefine that acquisition.
That step wasn't taken because, at that stage of the process, it wasn't necessary.
Now, however, there is a process in which this question cannot be avoided. And it is no longer just in Rome. It is in Luxembourg. Far from the political spotlight.
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